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Ohne Zusammenfassung     

Who’s afraid of an EU tax and why?—revenue system preferences in the European Parliament

The current revenue system of the EU is still structured like that of an organization based on intergovernmental cooperation, although the EU is already far advanced in legislative and political integration. This antagonism gives reason to discuss whether or not the EU should be granted an autonomous tax source. Our contribution to this debate explores the factors which shape the acceptance of the EU tax option among European policy makers. A self-conducted survey among Members of the European Parliament (MEPs), which resulted in a response of some 150 of the representatives, offers us a unique database. Concerning MEPs’ revenue system preferences, our findings confirm an important impact of party ideology and individual characteristics while they indicate that country-specific factors also contribute to understand the attitudes towards an EU tax. In the light of our findings the status quo bias in the revenue system of the EU can be attributed to the persistent importance of national interests with respect to tax policy.

Correction to: Effects of funding mechanisms on participation in multilateral environmental agreements

International Environmental Agreements: Politics, Law and Economics - In the original publication of the article, there were few mistakes in the text, tables and figure. The corrected text has been...     

Die Produktion sozialer Sicherheit.

In the current public discourse the phenomenon of insecurity is widely discussed since various kinds of social risks are becoming more widespread throughout European societies threatening biographical stability and status security. Given this there is a quest for a realignment of state interventions aiming at the (re-)production of stability and security. It is assumed that institutional arrangements and interventions such as employment protection, income maintenance schemes and healthcare provision not only contribute to objective but also to subjective security. Using data from the European Social Survey 2008 for the labor force in 20 European nations, we test this assumption by scrutinizing three kinds of perceived social risks: the risk of job loss, the risk of lack of monetary means and the risk of insufficient healthcare provision. We take on a cross-national perspective and conduct ordinal multi-level regression analyses in order to measure the extent to which different levels of social policy interventions can be accounted for differences in subjective insecurity. We find that a high degree of employment protection??astonishingly??does not enhance the perceived employment security significantly, whereas higher levels of social security spending and healthcare expenditure indeed go along with higher levels of subjective security. This relationship is moderated by the general level of economic development.     

Working with children as stakeholders in development: the challenges of organisational change

This article considers the challenges of promoting children's participation in development programming. It argues against the tendency to see the main obstacle to achieving this aim as technical. Instead it explores the institutional dimensions of change that may be required. The experience of a four-year process of training and organisational review within Save the Children Denmark provides the substance for reflection about the kinds of cultural and structural change that are implicated in enabling a development organisation to become capable of engaging young people as stakeholders in a meaningful and sustainable manner.     

Human dental age estimation by calculation of pulp-tooth volume ratios yielded on clinically acquired cone beam computed tomography images of monoradicular teeth

Abstract: Secondary dentine is responsible for a decrease in the volume of the dental pulp cavity with aging. The aim of this study is to evaluate a human dental age estimation method based on the ratio between the volume of the pulp and the volume of its corresponding tooth, calculated on clinically taken cone beam computed tomography (CBCT) images from monoradicular teeth. On the 3D images of 111 clinically obtained CBCT images (Scanora^®3D dental cone beam unit) of 57 female and 54 male patients ranging in age between 10 and 65 years, the pulp–tooth volume ratio of 64 incisors, 32 canines, and 15 premolars was calculated with Simplant^® Pro software. A linear regression model was fit with age as dependent variable and ratio as predictor, allowing for interactions of specific gender or tooth type. The obtained pulp–tooth volume ratios were the strongest related to age on incisors.